Union Social Club

Union Social Club, High Street North, Dunstable

This is a former cinema of the same name, built in 1936-7 to the designs of Leslie H Kemp. It is constructed in red and brown brick to the front and immediate returns, with Fletton brick to the body of the auditorium. The roof is obscured by high parapets. The building contains a double-height auditorium with a single balcony, served by foyers on two levels with offices to the sides.

The exterior presents a symmetrical three-storey facade. Four sets of double doors are approached by four steps from the pavement, and five tall windows at first-floor level have stone surrounds. A continuous balustrade in scrolling metal runs across the bottom of these windows. Above the central window is a female figure in stone relief offering film spools aloft before a draped proscenium. The corners at the top are set back, and the parapet has concrete coping. The facade returns are of similar brick but with irregular fenestration.

The interior contains a foyer with a circular central plaster ceiling incorporating Vitruvian scroll and honeysuckle motifs. Fluted pilasters feature honeysuckle, scroll and tazza motifs. The doors to the auditorium each have eight square panels. To the right, stairs up to the upper foyer have a fine metal balustrade of scrolling design. Two fluted niches and a mirror are set on the outer wall of the stairs, with a fluted frieze and simple moulded cornice. The spacious upper foyer has Corinthian pilasters and one column supporting an architrave in front of windows which rise into a cove higher than the main part of the ceiling. The ceiling is richly coffered. At the opposite end to the stairs is a full-height mirror with etched glass panels at the top in a scrolling design with tazzas and griffins, incorporating a clock face. An ashtray is inset on the wall near the top of the stairs with Art Deco lettering reading 'ASHES'.

The long double-height auditorium has a proscenium with niches either side running to the full height above the emergency exit doors. The niches are flanked by fluted columns with composite Ionic capitals and fibrous plaster grilles based on arabesques. Panels of similarly designed fibrous plaster continue back along the side walls in horizontal panels, interspersed with plain bands separated by cyma mouldings. A continuous fluted frieze runs at cornice level. The ceiling is elaborately moulded, rising as a series of fluted bands in drum form supporting pendants and circular ventilation openings with fibrous plaster grilles in stylised foliage design.

This cinema has an interior once typical of the ambitious Art Deco schemes executed for Union Cinemas in the 1930s, created in emulation of the more elaborate Granada cinemas but in a distinctive idiom. This ambitious policy eventually bankrupted the company in 1937, and few if any other Union cinemas survive in comparable condition. Leslie Kemp was a prolific cinema designer of the period, though few of his buildings survive; the Regal Camberwell in Southwark is a simpler design which is already listed. The Union Dunstable closed as a cinema in 1973 but has survived with little alteration as a bingo hall.